Review by Sonny for Marduk - Those of the Unlight (1993)

Marduk at their height were a full-on assault of unrelenting, martial brutality masquerading as a black metal band. Albums like Panzer Division Marduk and Plague Angel are exhilharating adrenaline-rushes that display little variation but are addictive as hell to those who love an all-out blastathon and just need a hit of aggression and nihilistic fervour. Yet this wasn't always the case with the Swedish black metal titans. Ten months after the blackened death metal of Dark Endless was released they unleashed their sophomore, Those of the Unlight, which is a huge improvement on the debut in my opinion, but is very different from their later, more well-known material. With Those of the Unlight Marduk tread a far more varied and melodic path than they would on later releases. There is an ambition to the songwriting that they lost once they had settled on their identity and the direction they wished to take. The melody on Wolves could well be whistling around in your head for days after hearing it and most of the songs feature some degree of development without constantly bursting out of the blocks. This doesn't mean this is a "tame" album, they still let rip fairly often - On Darkened Wings for example contains some intense blasting for sure, but it also has a nicely ominous atmosphere that is allowed to build and offers contrast to the aggressive passages when they hit, resulting in a more satisfying payoff. Those of the Unlight even features an ambient piece which, let's face it, would be completely out of character for later Marduk and despite my oft-touted aversion to a lot of ambient stuff on black metal albums, Echoes From the Past actually works really nicely here.

The thing is that Marduk at their best are kind of unbeatable when it comes to relentless blasting, but Those of the Unlight also illustrates a band that have more than that to offer. I would never want to be without Panzer Division Marduk, it is one of my all-time favourite black metal albums, but Marduk also produced some rather unimpressive releases in similar vein and it would have been nice to hear them stretch their wings at some point too and realise the potential they showed with Those of the Unlight rather than just regurgitating the same tropes time and again. I guess there's still time, but with every lacklustre attempt to reproduce PDM it seems less and less likely.